


Koan

by Laylah



Category: Shin Megami Tensei: Nocturne
Genre: M/M, Neutral Ending, Philosophy, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-11-13
Updated: 2009-11-13
Packaged: 2017-10-02 14:28:52
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,060
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7392
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Laylah/pseuds/Laylah
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's a beautiful day in Shibuya.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Koan

It's a beautiful day in Shibuya. The air is just warm enough to make jasmine tea ices sound good, the crowds are interesting but not overwhelming, and there are sales happening at both Chiaki's favorite boutique and Isamu's favorite record store. It's the kind of day that makes you feel lucky to be alive. It's the kind of day they always have when they get together on the weekend to hang out.

Sometimes, if they head up to a rooftop cafe to bask in the sunlight, Naoki squints off into the distance where everything starts to get hazy and wonders if it's this beautiful everywhere. Ms. Takao would tell him it's like a koan: does the world he imagined extend further than he imagined it?

He'll never know. Sometimes he's fascinated by the idea that it doesn't, that if he left Tokyo tomorrow on the train he'd be able to see the edges of the defined world pushing out in the distance ahead of him, the landscape popping up in a hurried cascade like it does in Isamu's computer games. He wonders what would happen if he decided to go to America on vacation, or to France, or to Tahiti, wonders whether this is _the_ world back again or just _his_ world.

Today the idea's not funny. Today it makes the hair stand up on the back of his neck -- where there isn't a horn after all, anymore -- and makes him shiver in the light breeze. He calls it a day pretty early, when the sun is just starting to slant through between the buildings instead of shining straight down on them, when the buildings are lit up rosy gold.

"You're brooding again," Chiaki says, "aren't you?" She smiles, leans up to kiss his cheek when he says goodbye. "You should be happier. Girls like a mysterious boy, sure, but don't push it." She glances over at Isamu. "Don't let him mope all night, okay?"

"Of course not," Isamu says.

Naoki wonders if they used to be such good friends.

Isamu lives in the same dorm with him -- he _does_ remember changing that, wanting them to be closer than they were before. So now they have rooms down the hall from each other; sharing one would have been too much, might have made him claustrophobic, but this way there's just distance enough. When he wants distance. He's not sure if he does right now. Another koan: what hope is left for a man whose dreams have come true?

Chiaki's right. He broods too much.

Naoki unlocks the door to his room and looks back over his shoulder. "I'm keeping you company whether you like it or not," Isamu says. "You're too needy to be left alone."

"If you say so," Naoki says, and opens the door wide enough for Isamu to follow him in.

It's true enough. If he'd been someone else, made different choices, he could have forged a new world without them. He didn't. He shrugs out of his jacket, drapes it over the back of his chair, leans back into the touch when Isamu takes that as an invitation to slide warm arms around his waist.

"We should put on a movie or something," Isamu says.

Naoki shrugs, nods, digs the remote control out from under his bed. There's a classic monster movie marathon playing on one of the cable stations, grainy black-and-white movies where guys in rubber suits rampage awkwardly through scale models of Tokyo fifty years ago. He puts the remote down.

Isamu shakes his head, smiling. "You're still hung up on those things, huh?"

"I'm holding out for the one where the monster wins," Naoki says.

"You're weird, man," Isamu tells him, and that makes it a little better. They get comfortable on Naoki's narrow dorm bed, lying on their stomachs, propped up on their elbows to face the TV. Scientists in white coats wave their arms and make dire predictions about the trouble they'll be in if they can't find the monster's weakness. Isamu fidgets beside him, not really paying a lot of attention to the movie. He probably just suggested it for the sake of background noise. Naoki looks over at him and Isamu leans in for a kiss. His mouth is warm and tastes like chewing gum. Someday he'll give up the habit or switch flavors or something and it'll feel like kissing somebody totally different.

Naoki rolls on top of him, pushing his hat off and working fingers into his hair. Isamu tangles his legs with Naoki's and rocks up against him, languid and slow, an invitation.

They strip, easy, casual, and the late afternoon sun slants in under Naoki's half-drawn blinds to light Isamu's skin gold. He's sleek, lean, perfectly smooth. It's not the same body that went through the Conception and was re-made in the depths of Amala, but the soul inside this new flesh --

Naoki lowers his head to mouth at the pulse beating below Isamu's jaw: can any man recognize the heart of another?

It goes easily, like it has every time they've done this. Isamu opens up for him without hesitation, pulling Naoki down on top of him, deeper inside him. He smiles when Naoki leans back enough to look him in the eyes. It's hot and smooth and just slick enough, and Isamu comes first, and he laughs when Naoki finishes too and collapses on top of him. Before, in the old version of the world, Naoki is pretty sure this never would have happened. He kisses Isamu again.

"You're happy, right?" he says.

"Stupid question," Isamu says. "Of course." He stretches, his old smile tugging at one corner of his mouth. It's almost the same. "You'd better not tell me you aren't."

Naoki shakes his head. "I'd have to be crazy," he says. He rolls out of bed and pads across the room to dig a packet of tissues out of his school bag. "Here." He tosses them to Isamu, then glances over at the TV. The movie is ending, model Tokyo a scatter of broken buildings, the heroic scientist helplessly reaching for the sky one last time before he collapses in the rubble. The credits start to roll as the monster wades across the empty landscape. Naoki blinks at it. Has the monster actually gotten a good ending?

Will it be satisfied?


End file.
